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Friday, December 19, 2008

The Faux Fur Vest Begins

Over the past couple of weeks, amidst traveling, shopping, cooking, and cleaning, I have managed to get my fur vest cut out. This fur is a different look from the hat I just made. I am guessing it is a faux beaver. It has nice guard hairs, natural color variation, and a soft knit backing. The pattern is Simplicity 2780, a Daisy Kingdom pattern that has outfits for a child as well as a vest for Mom. It is the mommy thing I am going after. This pattern has flanges added to the armscye which kind of amplify the fur effect. I have since seen this design technique in RTW fur vests. There is a band around the CF and bottom edge but I have eliminated that, choosing to use the lining pattern for my actual pattern. Vests fit me notoriously badly and hopefully this will be the exception. I did a muslin. I removed about an inch from the upper back. I usually remove a similar amount from the upper chest, but in this case rotated it down to a dart on the side. The muslin worked with these adjustments so hopefully the fur will too. Because of the dart, length was added to the front bodice as well.A lot of attention was paid to nap, and "pelts". You can see from the reverse of the fabric here that the fabric is "pelted" with a slight color variation. This needed to be matched on all pieces. Once the muslin was fitted the adjustments were made to the pattern pieces. They were then laid on the back side of the fur and traced with a Sharpie (!). The fur was cut with tiny, tedious, tedious snips of the points of my shears. Of the various techniques tried this was the least messy. I have asthma and did not want to be coughing up furballs in the night and this worked quite well. I did use a mask when cutting most of it.So now the fur sits. I probably won't get to this till after Christmas. In the meantime, tonight I made samples of buttonholes. I am still toying with the idea of a faux tooled leather placket. I would really like this but am not sure of the button situation. I don't want this to look homemade. Tonight I made a faux placket and did lots of buttonhole samples with my Pfaff. The arrowed, corded one is the best. I am going to do some more buttonhole samples with my mechanical Kenmore, a real buttonhole queen, before making up my mind. If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you can get a better idea of the results. Not stellar!

In a recent post I was asked what interfacings I used in the cashmere coat. I chose to interface the flannel interlining for starters and not fusing anything to the cashmere. The entire front underlining and facings were fused with a weft interfacing. I get it from Fabric Fix and they get it from somewhere in the garment district. It is great stuff and 60 inches wide. I also used sew in Acro as well for upper back, collar, cuff hems, jacket hem, and welts. I got out my Claire Schaeffer "Designer Secrets" and interfaced per her instructions. That is a great book set up in a really organized way. I like that.

6 comments:

Looks like a lot of work, and if in another lifetime I get brave enough to try fur, I'll check back to this post first (very informative!). Was worried that you weren't posting because you were frozen under all that ice that hit. Glad you made it through and were busy sewing instead!

I agree, the buttonhole with the arrow is the best of the lot. The other machine may turn out one you love better. You could opt for hammered in snaps, too, on the faux leather. No need for buttonholes, unless you already have the perfect buttons.

About Me

I am a passionate sewist who was taught heirloom hand sewing by Spanish nuns as a child. But my love of all things fiber has taken many turns since then. I have seriously sewn my entire life and can't imagine not doing so. I have tried other creative endeavors but now realize that designing and sewing clothing for myself and others is what I am meant to do. I pray this trip through my blog is one you will savor and return to. I've been proudly blogging since April of 2007.